


God Bless the Dead

by arenoseAnima



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-15
Updated: 2013-03-15
Packaged: 2017-12-05 08:56:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/721237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arenoseAnima/pseuds/arenoseAnima
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if Karkat had killed Gamzee there on the meteor? (Split off from <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/295070">Prompt and Circumstance.</a>)</p>
            </blockquote>





	God Bless the Dead

“So many motherfucking beautiful miracles down there,” you say quietly, your bare toes curling and uncurling past the edge of your dream bubble. It’s a vantage point from which you can see what’s left of your friends. You pick out Terezi, Karkat, Kanaya; Sollux’s body in its sad little motherfucking pool of yellow-ass grub sauce. You see your own body, too, the head laying a few feet distant from the neck. You realized you were dead pretty much as soon as you showed up here. You remembered clear as the cloudless fucking night sky with all those stars up there how you bit it, too. Karkat’s sobs stuck in your head like an empty bottle in a doorway, and you swore you could still feel the catgut sawing of his sickle on your neck - his hands were shaking so bad, your poor bro, his palm quivering over your mouth, he could barely keep a grip on his blade. And you remember how tired you were, how ready to be done, you just hurt and cried and let him. You still haven’t shook off all that tired. And now you’re looking at your best motherfucking brother down there all licked up in green light, holding your head in his arms while he sobs over Sollux, and all the shit you were mad about is the smallest potatoes.

You turn your head from the distant shape of the meteor and look at the hand on your shoulder. You almost forgot it was there, it feels so much like your own - it even looks like yours, blew all up like a balloon made of meat and bones. The fingers are stained with  colors of blood you didn’t even know were a thing, but mostly it’s olive-tree green and sweet candy red. The red almost goes up to his elbows - his, your closer-than-a-brother, your motherfucking ancestor, the Grand Highblood. You were surprised to see him, and then not so surprised; he looks like you even past his hands, tall, hunched and all bent like a tree made to a catapult, his face painted up in the most mirthfulest of patterns, all his big sharp teeth lined up in a bright sickle grin that doesn’t touch the deepest saddest eyes you ever did see. “Let it go, little grub,” he rumbles, voice so deep you swear they can hear it way down and out in black space, but nobody looks up, nobody sees you two drifting up so far from them. “Let it all go. What’s done is done.” When he says it, his fingers twitch a little, and the burnt-eyes red on his hands stains your shirt for a second.

You swallow and feel the blade bobbling at your throat, or maybe that’s all those tears you gulped up so as you wouldn’t cry like a wiggler in front of him. You try to answer and you kind of hiccup; he turns you to face him, away from the bright, and behind him you can see the beach stretching out with your house just so close and your lusus curled on the shore in a goatnap; above there’s the twisty mess of the motherfucking horrorterrors, but he blots all that out, the black of his hair not holding anything in it but good dark heavy smell. “I can’t,” you say when you got your words all bundled up right back in your head where they belong. Your hands are bloody too, depths-blue on one and green like autumn forests on the other, matching each other and the blood on him. “I fucked it all up. I… I fucked it up.” Your head gallows-drops and you stare at the ground, bare feet on one side and big, big shoes on the other.

“Yeah,” he says, but not like a punch to your chest - like the moons dipping under the horizon, like curling up in your cocoon after a long night. His other hand comes up and runs through your hair, his rough thumb brushing the base of your horn. “But it’s all up and done now. Nothing to motherfucking do but forgive yourself.” Like it’s the easiest thing in the world, when at first you thought he was painting there was so much rainbow dripping all down him.

You pitch forward into his chest and hide your face in black and purple and the slow steady sound of a dead heartbeat. He puts his arms around you and bends a little more, heavy on you, to tuck his chin into your hair. He doesn’t really say anything much more, just holds you there. You figure he can’t see you when you’re up and scrunched into his front, so you kind of let yourself unravel, the bubble in your throat popping and letting all those tears gush out. You do good at first, and then you start shaking, remembering again everything you all up and did when you didn’t know what you were doing, but you did, you remember what you thought and how you told yourself it was right and good, but no, you deserved what you got and you deserved it more than any motherfucker who ever walked under the felt-green moon. You know he feels you shaking, too, because his hands are right on your shoulders that pitch and yaw and warp and weft, but he just acts like nothing’s happening, just runs his fingers over your shoulderblades where maybe you would have had your own wings if you’d done what you were supposed to. But you don’t  _know_ what you were supposed to.

You try to talk again, but ribcages aren’t real good listeners. You tip your head back; you’re so close you can smell his breath ruffling your hair. “What d - “ He puts his thumb over your mouth and you get up and cut off like your own head. “No,” he says. “I said that shit is  _done_ , little grub, and we ain’t going to talk about it again until you can open your mouth about it without dipping into the blue, you hear me?” You nod, since you can’t open up your motherfucking trap yet, and your lips skid over his thumbprint. “Good.” He takes his hand away. You don’t say nothing. His smile all up and crawls into his dark plum eyes. “Hey,” he says. “Hey,” you say. “Your paint is all motherfucking smudged up,” he tells you.

He takes a pot of paint, white on one side and black on the other, from his belt; the white looks sick in the green light from behind you. “Here,” he says, and he paints onto your face a smile that won’t be real for a good long time. But that’s okay, you think. After all, life is beautiful.

 

 


End file.
